Page:History of Delaware County (1856).djvu/406

 882 HISTORY OF unwonted exertions used^ the wMg candidate^ Gen. Root^ pre- vailed; although by a majority of only a few votes. The five years that followed^ were employed by Mr. Parker in the energetic and laborious practice of his profession. At the end of that time, in 1844, he was appointed Circuit Judge of the third Circuit, when he removed to Albany, where he has continued to reside until the present time. The duties of this distinguished post were most arduous, combining, as they did, those of a judge of the Circuit, and vice-chancellor of the Court of Equity. To them he devoted, untiringly, the best energies of his mind, and met in an un- faltering manner his great responsibilities. The same promptness and system which distinguished him as a lawyer,^ characterized him as a judge, and enabled him to dispose of an almost incredible amount of business. In 1845, he held the Delaware Circuit, and no greater re- sponsibility was ever cast upon a judge, than fell to the lot of Judge Parker, in holding that court. The county had been de- clared in a state of insurrection, (see chapter XI.) by the gover- nor, in consequence of the violent resistance made to the laws. Assemblages numbering two or three hundred persons, armed and disguised as Indians, had appeared in different parts of the county, and set the law and its of&cers at defiance. Under- sheriff Steele had been shot down while engaged in the dis- charge of an official duty, under the painful circumstances already fully narrated. The governor had therefore found it necessary to call into service a military force, which had been maintained at the county seat for several weeks, by whose aid arrests had been made, and public order maintained. The jail of the county, and two temporary jails, had been filled with prisoners, charged with every grade of crime, from murder down to misdemeanor. It was under such a state of things, and in the midst of an excited community, divided in opinion as to the causes which had led to the commission of